What Happens when Individual Turns are Used and Delivered with Fidelity

What Happens When Individual Turns are Used and Delivered with Fidelity

Using Individual Turns with Fidelity 
Using individual turns is a valuable part of effectively teaching a lesson. 

What It Achieves 
Individual turns provide the teacher with a continuous check on student mastery within the lesson and provides a review of lesson concepts in a format that allows individual students to succeed.  

More Detail 
An effective teaching lesson has eighty-five per cent choral responses and fifteen per cent individual responses. Teachers ask for individual turns following choral responses at the end of an exercise.  

The teacher ensures the group response is firm before individual turns are provided. Firm means that students can go through an exercise with no errors. In general, teachers give only a few individual turns for each exercise. If the teacher has a small group, they aim for less than half the group. In a larger group, fewer students are called. 

Individual turns are not specified in all exercises. When a teacher is unsure about the performance of any student, they present quick individual turns. Teachers always includes the individual turns technique for exercises where it is specified. 

When teachers give individual turns, they follow the same process every time. The teacher announces it is time for individual turns, points to the sound or word or asks a question, allows think time and then calls an individual student name. This keeps all students focused as they never know whose name will be called.